ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century, physicians contributed to a wider discourse about women’s nature, capabilities and their place in society, the constitution of women, and gender relations tied to women’s unique biological characteristics and functioning. Entrenched in medical theories about both physical and mental illness was that the reproductive organs (the ovaries and uterus), and the periodicity of reproductive biology as exhibited in the menstrual cycle, caused women’s weakness, nervous debility, sickness and disease. Women’s life cycles were equivalent to the events of their reproductive years.1 The biologically determined phases of the life cycle, from puberty to the menopause, also became part of women’s self identity. Significantly, interest in women’s health other than this reproductive cycle was largely absent, and continued to be so until the mid-twentieth century, although the particular focus on reproduction changed.
